It’s recruitment time and Panhellenic new member/pledge pins are now being worn by young women on campuses across North America. (FYI “new member” is the new terminology, but “pledge” doesn’t want to be in the background and FWIW, it is a better descriptor, as many keep telling me. “Rush” is still in common usage as “Potential New Member Recruitment” seems a bit long for the job. But I digress.)
Jen Lancaster, Pi Beta Phi, recommends Lisa Patton’s new book. Patton is a Kappa Delta alumna from the University of Alabama chapter.
Emma Harper Turner, who was one of Pi Beta Phi’s most influential Grand Presidents, is one of my favorite sorority women of yore. A fun fact about her is that she was a Kappa Kappa Gamma before she was a Pi Beta Phi. When Kappa, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, withdrew the charter of its chapter at Franklin College, Turner and a friend asked for and were granted Honorable Dismissals from Kappa. They then petitioned Pi Phi for a charter and it was granted. Turner was instrumental in establishing Pi Phi’s alumnae department in 1893 and the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
So when did it become impossible to be initiated into two National Panhellenic Conference (NPC) organizations? Turns out is was more than seven decades ago as this is one of the resolutions passed by the 1947 Conference:
That no person who has resigned from one NPC fraternity is eligible to membership in another NPC fraternity.
It was a particularly important resolution because 11 organizations were admitted to associate membership at that meeting. Six of those organizations, members of the Association of Education Sororities (AES), were granted associate membership – Alpha Sigma Alpha, Alpha Sigma Tau, Delta Sigma Epsilon, Pi Kappa Sigma, Sigma Sigma Sigma and Theta Sigma Upsilon. These were the groups that had chapters at Normal Schools and Teachers Colleges. AES was established in 1916 and two of the Farmville Four (Zeta Tau Alpha, Kappa Delta, Sigma Sigma Sigma, and Alpha Sigma Alpha) had to close their founding chapters in order to comply with NPC rules since Longwood University was originally a teacher training institution.
Also admitted to NPC as associate members at that 1947 meeting were Alpha Epsilon Phi, Phi Sigma Sigma, Delta Phi Epsilon, Sigma Delta Tau, and Theta Phi Alpha. All 11 groups would be granted full NPC membership at the 1951 meeting.
What is important to note is that it was once possible to be a member of an AES organization and an NPC one. A member of my Pi Phi alumnae club belonged to Delta Sigma Epsilon when she was a student at Southern Illinois Normal School (now SIU Carbondale) and then joined the Pi Phi chapter when she enrolled at Northwestern University. When the AES groups became NPC groups, women who were members of two organizations had to resign from one of them.
There are some women who think the NPC ruling made in 1947 prohibiting membership in more than one NPC group is unfair, especially when one transfers institutions and there is not a chapter of her organization at the new school. She would be considered an alumna, and yet, she is an undergraduate who may be at a school with an active fraternity and sorority system. The meme one reads when encountering these stories on the internet is why shouldn’t she be able to have fun? Why should she be penalized because there is not a chapter of her sorority at the new school? Why can’t she just go through recruitment again and join another chapter? Or what about those that can be filed under “buyer’s remorse” or “the grass is always greener” situations? The answer is cut and dry. One NPC group per person, no matter the situation.
The weed growing inside the stop sign pole took “bloom where you are planted” very seriously.
